Tamam Shud
On December 1, 1948, a body was found on Somerton Beach in Adelaide, Australia. The man was impeccably dressed in a suit and tie, but all the labels had been cut off his clothes. He had no ID, no wallet, and his dental records matched no one in Australia. The autopsy revealed his spleen was enlarged, suggesting poison, but no trace of any known poison was found in his system. The mystery deepened when police found a tiny scrap of paper hidden in a secret pocket of his trousers. It read simply: “Tamam Shud” (Persian for “It is ended”).
The Rubaiyat Code
The scrap was torn from a rare edition of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Police found the book it came from, tossed into a nearby car. In the back of the book, they found a handwritten code that has never been cracked, and a phone number belonging to a nurse named Jessica “Jestyn” Thomson.
- The Spy Theory: The man’s lack of ID, the cut labels, the undetectable poison, and the code strongly suggest he was a Cold War spy. Jessica Thomson behaved strangely when shown a plaster cast of the man’s face, looking like she was about to faint, but denied knowing him.
- The Love Child: Years later, it was discovered that Jessica’s son had rare genetic traits (missing teeth and ear shape) shared by the Somerton Man, suggesting they had a child together.
- Identity Revealed (2022): In 2022, DNA analysis finally identified the body as Carl “Charles” Webb, an electrical engineer from Melbourne. However, this answer only raised more questions. Why was an engineer in Adelaide? Why was he poisoned? What did the code mean?
The Enduring Mystery: While we now know his name, the circumstances of Charles Webb’s death-and his connection to the mysterious “Jestyn”-remain a dark puzzle of espionage and forbidden love.